I happen to think £2000 worth of business support hand pressed for a business owner is worth a mention and a share.

Our friend and colleague, Drystan Howell of Sketchanet is running a Black Friday promotion - and it really is worth a proper glance over.

Especially if you:

Are in the market for a beautifully designed website for your business. This means structured, built designed, and made ready for you top to bottom, inside out and he's even throwing in £275 worth of photography.

Are wrestling with marketing and just want a marketing genius to come and sort you out inside 3hours. For Free. Her name is Shannon Eastman and she is Chief Action Taker over at Teach a Brand to Fish (link) (Images). Drystan had her gift any business owner who buys during Black Friday a 2hour Clarity Direction Action workshop in time for you and 2018. Would love some sexy social media designs for your profiles. Three of them. For Free.

A complete set that make you look as good as you are, drive sales, and work hard to build your online reputation.

Here at Ceratopia we're teaming up with Drystan to ensure your new beautiful website leverages equally beautiful social media profiles.

Would love 4 Blog Posts at 75% off rate card. Exactly one month's worth to stimulate the top of your sales funnel, be seen, and facilitate word of mouth. Actually, we reckon you may just try and keep Claire long after you get your kick off call and 4 hand pressed, well researched blog posts. Claire is a machine with content, content creation, social media content in fact Drystan was deliberating for a few days about which one of Claire's programs to bring to you, there are so many good ones.

Hythe Pier held its first fun day today to help heighten awareness of the restoration work that need doing, and to raise some funds too.

As the pier is made up of planks, some bright spark named it Walk The Planks and gave the day a pirate theme. Genius. So I've spent the day drawing pirate cartoons of children and selling my books to those who came and enjoyed our important and much valued Victorian pier. It was a busy day, so fingers crossed it did some good, and that we can do it all again next year.

A little over a week ago I was at the New Forest Arts Festival launch event at the Minstead Trust along with lots of other artists and performers. It was fascinating to see the broad scope of the festival reflected in those attending, from theatre to painting, Morris dancing to cartoons.

This year, for the New Forest Arts Festival, I'll be in Lyndhurst at the Community Centre indulging in some live cartooning on a big board. Come along and see me draw on Saturday 17th from 11am to 5pm, and there'll be an opportunity to have a go at cartooning yourselves as you watch.

The Community Centre is at the opposite end of the main car park to the New Forest Museum, so easy to find and plenty of parking, and if you have parking clock you can park for free too!

Simon was at Totton Rainbows yesterday sharing his children's books and leading a drawing workshop. Using just simple lines, shapes, numbers and letters, Simon builds one of the characters from his books in a simple, easy-to-follow step-by-step method that leaves all the children (and a few adults) with a drawing they can be proud of.

The Rainbows only meet for an hour, so rather than be paid for this time it was agreed that the group would buy each of their Rainbows one of Simon's books, which he duly signed and dedicated for each girl.

Ann Barlow, who runs the Rainbows group said: "Thank you for being so brilliant with the Rainbows yesterday. They loved it and they were so engaged with what they were doing. You really spoke their language!"

If you'd like Simon to come and talk to your group, be they children or adults, do get in touch via our contact page.

Today I had the enormous pleasure of officially opening the brand new Totton College library, or more correctly, the Learning Resource Centre.

I attended Totton College as an A-level student between '89 and '91 so as an ex-student who now writes and illustrates books they thought me a good fit as the man to hand the ceremonial scissors to.

I was told to bring some books along in case people were interested and ended up almost selling out, which was a great bonus. Whether or not the magnificent attendance was down to me or the promise of a lavish spread of food and drink I couldn't say, although I'd be tempted to go with the former.

Have just spent a wonderful weekend with some good cartooning chums at the Lakes Comics Arts Festival in Kendal. The Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain was there for a third year recruiting new cartoonists, selling our cartooning gubbins and doing plenty of large scale live drawing that the public could snap up on the spot. Great fun, although shattered now...

The Zany Zebras trail is into its last fortnight, so thoughts are now turning to the Charity Fundraising Auction. This will take place at The Hilton at The Ageas Bowl in Southampton on Tuesday 18th October 2016, but if you're interested in going along and placing a bid on one (I hear The Trojan Zebra sponsored by Oxygen Freejumping is rather good) then you need to register for tickets as soon as possible.

A link to the auction guide is here, and you can bid in person, on the telephone by placing a proxy bid, or via the EasyLive Auction online.

There are 48 zebras in the auction, from beautiful mosaics to incredible paintings, and one with plenty of sparkle, so there's a very good chance you can acquire some rather fabulous art for your business, garden, restaurant, conservatory, wherever. The Go Rhinos! auction from a few years ago was a tremendous success with the rhinos being sold into commercial and private hands alike, so don't miss out. And if you know somebody with a couple of quid who might be interested, please do pass on this info and encourage them to register now. Don't leave it too late!

If you're heading into Southampton to do the Zany Zebra's trail this summer you might also like to take along a fun sheet for my Trojan Zebra. Spot In The Stripes challenges you to find a number of the lions hiding across the zebra and a very specific zebra too.

While I was beavering away drawing animal cartoons in the Longdown Activity Farm marquee at the New Forest Show there was something else going on in the Women's Institute tent. One of the challenges for the various WIs this year was to create a storybook sack showing off their various needlecraft skills (if anyone from a WI is reading this please forgive my inability to use the correct parlance). Marchwood WI asked me if they could use my New Forest Friends & The Litterbugs book as the focus for their piece, and I think the end result was jaw-droppingly brilliant. They've interpreted it perfectly, from the detail of a little knitted Emery the Woodmouse trapped in a discarded bottle to the amazing backdrop, made from felt, that looks just like my illustrated page. But it was the depiction of Beaulieu the Hedgehog that really did it for me – just as I'd imagined a soft toy of him would be like. Congratulations to Debra Rich, Judy Saxby, Patricia Berry, Lynda Butterfield and Sandra Gibson for an astounding piece of work.

Spent the morning at Lymington Library as part of New Forest Arts Festival, signing books and doing some live drawing. This is Oisin and his sister Aoife who took home the finished picture. Thanks for looking after me Lymington Library!